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How to Develop an Effective Attack Surface Management Program

In today’s fast-moving digital world, building an effective Attack Surface Management (ASM) program is no longer optional—it’s essential.

What is an ASM Program?

Every new application, cloud service, or third-party integration adds new entry points to an organization’s external attack surface. Unfortunately, attackers are quick to exploit misconfigurations, exposed assets, or forgotten systems—often within hours of discovery. Yet, many businesses still struggle to define what a complete ASM program should look like.

Some rely on outdated legacy tools that don’t match the speed of today’s environments, while others run periodic vulnerability scans that miss exposures appearing between assessments.

A true ASM program is not just a toolkit—it’s a continuous framework for discovering, monitoring, and mitigating risks before attackers can act. The strength of an ASM program is measured in time: How fast can new assets be identified? How quickly can exposures be validated and fixed?

The ultimate goal: minimize the window of exposure while keeping pace with evolving threats.

1. Continuous Asset Discovery: Gaining Full Visibility

Your attack surface is constantly shifting. Traditional static inventories quickly become outdated, leaving shadow IT, cloud misconfigurations, and forgotten subdomains unmonitored. These gaps are often exploited first by attackers.

To build visibility into every external-facing asset, security teams should:

  • Automate discovery: Manual methods can’t keep up with modern IT environments. Automation ensures real-time awareness of all internet-facing systems.

  • Go beyond IP scanning: Use DNS tracking, SSL certificate analysis, third-party service monitoring, and cloud metadata to uncover hidden assets.

  • Track temporary assets: Ephemeral resources, like short-lived cloud instances, may only exist for hours but still carry risk.

  • Enrich with context: Metadata such as open ports, DNS records, and certificate details provide deeper insights into asset risk.

Simply put: you can’t defend what you don’t know exists. Continuous, automated discovery ensures nothing slips through the cracks.

2. Risk-Based Prioritization: Addressing What Matters Most

Not every vulnerability is equal. Without clear prioritization, security teams waste time chasing low-impact issues while real threats linger.

Effective ASM programs focus on validating and prioritizing exposures that carry genuine business risk. This requires:

  • Looking beyond CVSS scores: Severity ratings don’t always reflect actual exploitability or impact.

  • Validating with proof-of-concept: Confirm which vulnerabilities are real and exploitable, avoiding wasted effort.

  • Ranking assets by importance: Critical production databases demand faster response than test servers.

  • Avoiding alert fatigue: Structured workflows ensure teams handle meaningful threats first.

Prioritization is about fixing the right vulnerabilities, not all of them.

3. Proactive Monitoring: Reducing the Risk Window

Threat actors move fast. Many vulnerabilities are scanned and exploited within hours of public disclosure. Relying on scheduled scans keeps organizations perpetually behind.

To reduce exposure time, teams should:

  • Adopt continuous scanning rather than weekly or monthly cycles.

  • Watch for shadow IT and unmanaged assets that bypass security oversight.

  • Leverage threat intelligence and IoC tracking to detect early signs of exploitation.

  • Assess third-party risks, since supply chain exposures are common attack vectors.

The faster issues are identified and addressed, the less opportunity attackers have to exploit them.

4. Metrics That Matter: Measuring Success

Without metrics, it’s difficult to measure ASM effectiveness or prove progress. Strong programs track performance using key indicators such as:

  • Mean Time to Remediation (MTTR): How long it takes to fix confirmed issues.

  • Mean Time of Exposure (MTE): How quickly vulnerabilities are detected after appearing.

  • Remediation velocity: The speed at which high-risk issues are resolved.

  • Discovery coverage: The percentage of assets continuously monitored.

These benchmarks help organizations refine processes and demonstrate value to stakeholders.

5. Integration with Broader Security Strategy

ASM shouldn’t operate in isolation—it must connect with the organization’s wider security initiatives.

  • Feed ASM findings into vulnerability management workflows.

  • Support Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) by providing real-time insights.

  • Strengthen Zero Trust policies by identifying assets requiring tighter controls.

  • Share ASM data across IT, DevOps, and compliance teams to ensure aligned action.

By embedding ASM across security operations, organizations gain a unified, proactive defense strategy.

6. Overcoming Common Challenges

Building an ASM program comes with hurdles. Common obstacles include:

  • Visibility gaps in shadow IT and third-party resources.

  • Legacy tools that can’t keep pace with today’s environments.

  • Lack of stakeholder buy-in due to unclear business value.

  • Workflow inefficiencies caused by alert overload.

Overcoming these challenges requires automation, modern tools, executive support, and structured remediation processes.

Why ASM Matters to the Business

At its core, ASM is not just about cybersecurity—it’s about business resilience. An effective program reduces breach risk, minimizes wasted effort on false positives, and helps organizations stay agile against ever-changing attack surfaces.

Organizations that implement ASM effectively shift from a reactive mindset to a proactive, always-ready approach. Instead of chasing incidents, they operate with confidence, knowing exposures are continuously discovered, prioritized, and secured.

Learn more about our ASM solution and how it can strengthen your security posture.

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